As we reported just the other day, Tesla quietly hiked rates for Supercharging in most states. Keep in mind that this impacts all Tesla Model 3 owners, as well as owners of new Tesla Model S and X vehicles who purchased their vehicles without utilizing a referral code. Thanks to hardcore EV fans like Teslanomics’ Ben Sullins, we have an update on how states were affected by the new rate hike, as well as the actual percentage of increase. As we explained the other day, states like Illinois have seen over a 60 percent increase, from .15/kWh to .25/kWh. States...

Anti-Semites are violating federal law by boycotting Israel and Israeli companies and institutions. Activists in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, one of the highest-profile global projects of the left, are subject to criminal and financial penalties, including jail time of five years and fines up to $50,000. A U.S. exporter can lose the right to export any products to any country. So why isn’t the U.S. Department of Justice enforcing the anti-boycott laws? President Donald Trump should order the Office of Antiboycott Compliance to come out of cryogenic stasis and get back to work, and order DOJ to...

Erin Brockovich, the activist whose crusade against PG&E spawned a hit movie, will appear with wildfire survivors at the Capitol in Sacramento to protest the utility’s plans to file for bankruptcy. The rally is set for noon Tuesday on the south steps of the Capitol, according to an announcement Friday by a consortium of law firms suing PG&E on behalf of wildfire survivors. PG&E announced it plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of January because it doesn’t have the money to pay an estimated $30 billion in potential liabilities from the 2017 wine country fires...

My S&P500 account has gone up pretty good in the last few weeks after a bigger hit prior. If the price of gas is going more towards $2/gallon and China is backing down on trade I certainly see it as a cause and effect The only other big thing on the horizon I see is the prospect of a big beautiful wall. Too much collateral damage without one. I'm talking drugs, violence, hit and run vehicle accidents. Gotta get better if Trump is in office for 6 more. Things will never be perfect but tell me how much China and...

Refiners in the United States are stocking up on heavy crude, pushing prices higher, as the Trump administration prepares to slam more punitive measures on Caracas after the inauguration of Nicolas Maduro as president of Venezuela for a second term after elections considered illegitimate by Washington. Reuters reports that officials from the presidential administration met with oil industry executives to discuss the measures on the table, including the suspension ofrefined product exports to Venezuela or Venezuelan crude oil imports into the United States. Gulf Coast refiners have a limited choice of supplier when it comes to heavy crude. Besides local...

BRUSSELS/PARIS - In Tehran on Jan. 8 during a meeting with European envoys, Iranian officials abruptly stood up, walked out and slammed the door in an extraordinary break with protocol. The next day, the European Union imposed its first sanctions on Iran since world powers agreed the 2015 Vienna nuclear arms control deal with Tehran. The sanctions were largely symbolic but the stormy meeting encapsulated the unexpected shift in European diplomacy since the end of last year. Smaller, more dovish EU countries have joined France and Britain in a harder stance on Tehran, including considering new economic sanctions, diplomats say....

The United States is expected to churn out far more oil in 2019 than what international analysts originally forecasted. The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based organization that helps coordinate energy policies for industrial countries, released its latest oil market report Friday, noting exceptional numbers for the U.S. fossil fuel industry. The agency reported U.S. oil production is expected to rise by 1.3 million barrels a day in 2019. While this number is lower than the record-smashing 2.1 million increase producers enjoyed in 2018, it’s more than double what the IEA initially expected to see in 2019. The forecast illustrates the...

The United States and its southwest tight and shale oil has changed from dependence on world oil to domination. News of the size of oil reserves in the Delaware Basin (New Mexico’s share of the Permian) while OPEC was deciding how many barrels it will cut from the world market to lift prices caused epic confusion — and revelations of how little “authorities” and the media understand petroleum economics. The New Mexico media, which relies mainly on interviews with petroleum industry spokespersons, got it wrong. Recommended Video Government numbers came out as 46 billion barrels (Permian total) with 26 in...

President Trump on Monday denied that he has been trying to conceal details about his discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a pair of explosive press reports over the weekend. "I never worked for Russia," Trump told reporters. "It's a disgrace that you even asked that question because it's a whole big fat hoax. It's just a hoax." Trump also said he doesn't know anything about what happened to the notes taken by an interpreter when he met with Putin last summer in Finland or after other meetings with the Russian leader. The Washington Post reported that Trump has...

President Trump on Monday asked why he would hurt Russia by expanding U.S. energy production if he was in cahoots with the Kremlin, as most Democrats suspect. “‘Gas prices drop across the United States because President Trump has deregulated Energy and we are now producing a great deal more oil than ever before.’ @foxandfriends But this is bad news for Russia, why would President Trump do such a thing? Thought he worked for Kremlin?” Trump wrote on Twitter Monday morning. On Friday, the New York Times reported that the FBI opened an investigation into whether President Trump was working with...

FULL TITLE: Trump touts 'long overdue' Syria pullout, says US 'will devastate Turkey economically' if they attack Kurds President Donald Trump on Sunday tweeted that the "long overdue pullout from Syria" is starting, and threatened that the U.S. will "devastate Turkey economically" if they attack Kurdish forces in the war-torn country. Trump said the removal of troops, which he announced via Twitter in December, is happening "while hitting the little remaining ISIS territorial caliphate hard, and from many directions." The president also vowed that the U.S. "Will attack [ISIS] again from existing nearby base if it reforms." Trump promised the...

Mexicans have endured a week of gas shortages as the government takes drastic action to combat narco fuel thieves. Several states in the center of the country, including the capital Mexico City, have seen hundreds of petrol stations closed and long lines at those left open. {snip} The government of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, has cut off the gas supply in a number of key pipelines transporting fuel from refineries. The aim is take the fight to the "huachicoleros" as the fuel thieves are known. Many are affiliated with larger drug cartels, who for years have been...

The floor of the Gulf of Mexico is one of the most geologically interesting stretches of the Earth’s surface. The gulf’s peculiar history gave rise to a landscape riddled with domes, pockmarks, canyons, faults, and channels — all revealed in more detail than ever before by a new 1.4 billion-pixel map. This striking view of the ocean floor off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas was created by a government agency you’ve likely never heard of called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The bureau’s job is to manage exploration and development of the country’s offshore mineral and energy...

In Venezuela, the main thing we hope and watch for is the whole disaster ending. The people are starving. The aid is not getting through. The oil is gone. The cocaine is out of control. The terrorists are running wild. The torture has started. The oil infrastructure is collapsing. The currency is rotten, with inflation in seven digits. The corruption tops Mobutu's. The country is selling itself out like a raddled street whore to hostile powers in exchange for military weapons and foreign troops to base there, and getting itself into deep-dive debt. Millions are fleeing. The neighbors are angry....

British Petroleum announced this week that it had identified a drilling area capable of producing 1 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The discovery was made thanks to what the company referred to as “recent BP breakthrough in seismic imaging” used for oil exploration. And the announcement came only days after Bloomberg reported that the United States had become became a net exporter of oil for the first time in decades. In a news release, BP announced it expected to grow its gulf production to around 400,000 barrels of oil per day in the next decade. “BP’s...

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is running into some trouble amid withering opposition from the Trump administration. As it stands, Russia still needs to ship large volumes of gas to Europe via Ukraine. Nord Stream 2 would allow Russian gas to bypass Ukraine, giving Russia more leverage to meddle in Ukraine while still reliably delivering gas to Europe. Merkel has been supportive of the project, not least because several major western European companies have stakes in the pipeline, including Royal Dutch Shell, as well as major German companies Wintershall and BASF. Last year, Merkel, under intense pressure from the Trump...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ready to tax the rich to make her Green New Deal a reality. “People are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” the recently elected New York Democrat told TV show “60 Minutes” in an interview set to air Sunday. Speaking of prior decades’ taxation rates in the country, Ocasio-Cortez added, “Once you get to the tippy tops, on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.” It shouldn’t be a surprise that the avowed “democratic socialist” went with the predictable “tax the rich”...

New sustainable biopolymer technology may one day free the world of its worst pollutant Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University Summary: A new Tel Aviv University study describes a process to make bioplastic polymers that don't require land or fresh water — resources that are scarce in much of the world. The resulting material is biodegradable, produces zero toxic waste and recycles into organic waste. FULL STORY: The invention was the fruit of a multidisciplinary collaboration between Dr. Alexander Golberg of TAU's Porter School of Environmental and Earth Sciences and Prof. Michael Gozin of TAU's School of Chemistry....

PARIS: Saudi Arabia has threatened military action against Qatar if it goes ahead and acquires Russia's top of the range S-400 air defence missile system, Le Monde daily reported. Citing information it had obtained, Le Monde said Friday that Riyadh had written to French President Emmanuel Macron asking him to intervene to prevent the deal going ahead and to help preserve regional stability. There was no immediate official reaction from the president's office or the French foreign ministry to the report. Saudi Arabia, backed by other regional powers including Bahrain and the Unite Arab Emirates, broke off relations with Qatar...

In his second year in office, the list of extraordinary things President Trump has done, for good and ill, continued to grow. Today, I offer my annual list of the 10 best things Trump has done in office. (In my next column, I will give you my list of the 10 worst.) 10. He has secured the release of 19 people, including 16 Americans, from foreign captivity. When Pastor Andrew Brunson was freed by Turkey, he became the 19th captive released thanks to Trump. Others include: four held by North Korea; an aid worker and her husband held by Egypt;...